Europe and the Governance of Global Finance by Daniel Mügge

Author:Daniel Mügge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

• Appropriately enhance the communicative value and relevance of the auditor’s report through proposed revisions of ISA requirements that address its structure and content; and

• Determine whether and how the IAASB’s reporting ISAs, in their design, can be made to accommodate evolving national financial reporting regimes, while at the same time ensuring that common and essential content is being communicated.7

(p.111) Two consultation papers were issued (IAASB 2011, 2012c) suggesting additional content that might be included in auditors’ reports such as commentary highlighting issues that, in the judgment of auditors, are likely to be important to users’ understanding of the audit and the audited financial statements. This would significantly supplement the traditional ‘true and fair view’ audit opinion as shown in the examples in Box 7.1. Other IAASB projects of wider interest concern audit quality, disclosures, and ISA implementation.8

In light of the financial crisis, the Monitoring Group’s main current task is public consultation on its own governance structure as well as that of the PIOB and the standards-setting boards of IFAC, including the role and composition of the various bodies and the financing of the PIOB (Monitoring Group 2012: 1–2). While satisfied with the overall three-tiered structure of IFAC standards-setting bodies, the Monitoring Group identified five ‘operational improvements’ to improve the accountability of standards-setting bodies and to better align their decisions with the public interest (Monitoring Group 2013: 5). The thrust of the improvements is to more clearly identify concerns of public interest and to demonstrate that they have been addressed, especially for issues conveyed by Monitoring Group members and other stakeholders, and to improve engagement and transparency more generally (Monitoring Group 2013: 5–10).

The PIOB’s concurrent consultation on its future work programme (PIOB 2012b) led to a set of 14 recommendations in response to the comment letters it had received (PIOB 2013). Again, the thrust of the recommendations was to strengthen the protection of the public interest by increasing the transparency of its activities, continuing to clarify the roles of IFAC, the PIOB, and the Monitoring Group, and more actively engaging with stakeholders. Here the PIOB specifically referred to better representation of the relatively neglected small and medium-sized accountancy firms and developing countries in IFAC’s standards-setting and consultative bodies (Recommendation 3).

In conclusion, the interest in the setting of ISAs from outside the accountancy and auditing profession largely stems from the fact that the standards setters—the IAASB acting under the remit of IFAC—are private actors established by the world-wide accountancy profession. They differ from other institutions comprising the international financial architecture such as the BCBS, the IMF, and the World Bank, which are public actors established by governments. The main challenge has been to ensure that the IAASB acts—and is perceived to act—in the public interest and not in the interests of the accountancy profession. The result has been the creation of linkages at the international, regional, and national levels involving a range of private, professional, and public actors. At the international level, this includes bodies such as the International Organization of Securities Commissions, the Basel Committee (p.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.